Author Archives: xinranz

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I think our class provides many interesting examples of the linguistic differences between English with East Asian languages and among Chinese, Japanese and Korean. For example, in week 10 classes, we learned about the differences in cognitive conception, languages in Eastern and Western visions. In Week 8, we learned about the new gender identities in East Asia. Although the new appearance has a different name in China (City jade men), Japan (herbivore boys), and Korea (Flower handsome men), they all show the change of modern society. We can use the culture to learn about linguistics and we can also use linguistics to show the culture. I am a native Chinese speaker and before our class, I have never realized that there is gender contrast in Chinese. It intrigued me that Chinese, Japanese and Korean all have gender contrast.

The organization of our course is very helpful for me to learn. I finish the reading and do the quiz to check if I miss some important points in reading. During the lecture, we have many pairs or small group activities to discuss what we learned and sometimes I can get some new ideas from other students. In lecture slides, there are many pictures that are very clear to help me to better understand the content. For example, the “Hello Kitty” pictures help me to understand the cuteness in Japan.  Discussion sessions help me to do the assignments by sharing ideas with other students who have the same interest as me in Korean. If I have some questions about the lecture and reading, I can ask other students or Hyunji during the discussion.

Thank you Kaori Idemaru and Hyunji Kim for teaching and helping!

Blog#2

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This photograph is taken in Eugene Chinese Christen Church. It is located on E 19th Avenue and just a couple blocks away from the School of Music & Art. That sign in the picture uses English and Chinese characters. During the lecture, we knew about in Chinese writing, the characters are written from the top to the bottom. In this picture, we can see the pattern of Chinese writing from the top to the bottom. “雨津yu jin” means Eugene and they are transliteration words. “基督教ji du jiao” means Christian. “华人hua ren” means Chinese. “教会jiao hui” means church. The Eugene Chinese Christen Church uses both characters in Chinese and English and that means the church welcoming all people to visit.

I think the most useful strategies in our class is carefully reading and taking notes during the lecture. Sometimes I thought that I did not understand the reading, for example, in Japanese basic characters about the left-branching part, I read the examples in the required reading, but I still confused about how to arrange part of speech in Japanese. During the lecture, the professor showed the graph of work order typology and that makes sense and more clearly than the examples in the reading. The lectures help me to enhance the reading content. Therefore, combining the reading and lecture with notes is very useful for me.

Hello Class

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Hello everyone! My name is Xinran 欣然(means “happiness” in Chinese) and I am a junior student. My major is education and I’m minoring in East Asian Studies. I was born in Dalian which is a coast city and is famous for seafood. My home city is only 1 hour and 20 minutes of flight to South Korea and 3 hours to Tokyo. Many Korean people and Japanese people work and live in Dalian. Also, Dalian is a multi-culture city that includes Chinese culture, Japanese culture, and Russian culture because of historical reasons. My grandfather and my dad all can speak fluent Japanese. So, I grew up under the nurture of multi-culture. When I was in middle school and I was attracted by K-pop culture. My favorite band is EXO and I came to its concert in 2016. I think this class is very helpful for me to know more about East Asian culture and it will be very useful for my future career.

Japanese style’s buildings in Dalian

Russian style’s building in Dalian

By the way, I enjoy cooking and baking, especially Chinese dishes and all kind of cakes.

So far, I really enjoy the class. I am looking forward to learning more information about East Asian culture. I think connecting the content of reading with Chinese, Japanese and Korean culture is a better way to understand and learn. My learning approaches are two simple ways: reviewing notes from the reading and the last class and previewing the PowerPoint for the next class. I use that approach in most of my major classes and it is also useful in our class. We have daily read with a quiz before the class and it is a very good way for me to prepare. I feel like this course is very interesting.